The Rage of the FU White Guy (Part I)

Taylor and Travis, A Story of Love and Hate

The couple that launched a million white dude freak outs. Courtesy, Patrick Smith/Getty Images.

FU White Guy

Noun

1.     American male defined by his opposition to most mainstream culture, inability to handle generational change, believes the Covid vaccine is the civil rights struggle of his time. Likely, though not always, a college-educated, financially successful, suburban father. May be ‘involuntarily celibate’ (incel) but isn’t a requirement for definition.

2.     Major league asshole.

3.     Probably has Lithium as a preset on SiriusXM.

Last summer, I took my daughters to see Taylor Swift in Los Angeles. It was the end of last year’s North American leg of the Eras Tour and I wanted the girls to see the show. What a show it was. For nearly four hours, 70,000+ people and Taylor sang together. The crowd didn’t sing along, they sang with her. I watched my daughters sing every song. Every song. They screamed their lungs out that night.

Taylor Swift on stage in Los Angeles. Courtesy, my old iPhone.

I knew more songs than I expected (I know them all now.) If you didn’t have fun, you weren’t trying. The secret song that night was Exile (which happens to be my favorite tune in the Swift catalog) and the young woman I was standing next to laughed out loud as I sang along.

I don’t believe I’ve ever been in one place where everyone, all 70,000 strong, the star, the dancers, the singers, the band, the security people, was happy. Joy burst forth from the roof of SoFi Stadium that night, as it has in many other cities across the world and in movie theaters too numerous to count.

Which is why I wasn’t surprised when the insanity that had been building among MAGA, right wing media, and what I call the FU white guys, spread like a deranged tsunami across the country after the Kansas City Chiefs won the AFC Championship game (for the sixth straight time.)

That warm night in LA last summer was anathema to the FU white guys. Generations of happy girls of all ages sang along with a woman and her songs of love, heartbreak, revenge, humor, and ego. It threatens the insecure dudes out in the world. (If she were a man, she’d be the man, and these guys would be fine with it.)

Then…oh, boy…Taylor Swift started dating Chiefs tight end (and future Hall of Famer) Travis Kelce. The MAGA tears flowed like salty lava down the cheeks of men in easy chairs around the country. She’s ruining football! It’s not about girlfriends, it’s about the game! Why are they showing her so much?!?

And what about Kelce? Sure, he’s an incredible ball player, but why won’t he just stick the gridiron? He’s been co-opted by Big Pharma and encourages people to get Covid vaccines (deep state!) He drinks Bud Light (woke-topia’s beer of choice!) He donates his time and money to food banks. Who is he trying to fool, anyway?

Kelce, and his legendary brother Jason (just retired from the Philadelphia Eagles) host a podcast together. They are funny and relatable. They’re from Ohio and went to the University of Cincinnati. They’re the kind of guys you’d drink beer with because you know you’d be rolling on the floor laughing.

The Kelce Brothers. Courtesy Patrick Smith/Getty Images.

They’re also normal, decent, and hard-working, in a time when being manly is far too often about how poorly you can treat someone (usually a woman,) how you can take advantage of people, make a lot of money and be as big an asshole as possible, simply to upset others.

Knowing that, the FU white guys’ revulsion at this happy couple is not complicated. It’s not about music, or football, or politics. It’s more elemental.

The MAGA FU white guy contingent is enraged by Taylor and Travis (or Tayvis if you prefer) for a very simple reason: They’re mad at a man they’ll never be, in a relationship with a woman who’d never date them. It’s all based in self-loathing and anger. It’s toxic not because they’re “masculine” but because they’re not.

I know a lot of these guys. Some of them are my friends. White American men of a certain age like to think of ourselves growing up in a tougher time (for the most part we didn’t) and now need to prove their ‘toughness’ to a world that frankly isn’t all that worried about it, or them. Maybe they’ve been president of your HOA. They don’t like to keep their side of the street clean, but woe to you if you’re not shipshape.

Honestly, we (men) all have some FU white guy in us. It’s why there’s a thing called ‘angry white guy music’ that we listen to when we want to drive fast (in our sensible family vehicle.) Honestly, is there such a thing as too much Stone Temple Pilots?

We’re a nation plagued with millions of Uncle Ricos pining for a time that never existed and upset with their own reality. A reality that just happens to be occurring during the most prosperous and safest time in human history.

Uncle Rico preparing to throw the football over them mountains.

They have little to complain about materially (and personally) so they turn their impotent rage on the rest of the world. If they stuck to the new rule: White guys over 45 must choose either smoked meats or World War 2 as a hobby, we’d all be better off. (WWII for me, btw.)

The irony of course is that they loudly proclaim self-reliance, self-defense, and individuality but are enraged by a star couple, both of whom are the best at what they do. Who’s problem is it then, really?

When we add MAGA’s insanity and social media’s superhighway to this mix, it makes more sense. No one, certainly no woman, can be that successful, popular, and wealthy because of her own talent, ingenuity, and hard work. Nope, it must be a conspiracy.

Honestly, what do you do with this?

Now that the Chiefs are headed back to the Super Bowl, the likes of Vivek Ramaswamy and Jack Posobiec (talk about two goons hunting for relevance) are convinced that the Swift-Kelce match is a giant put-up job by the NFL, George Soros, the Trilateral Commission, and Big Pharma for the purposes of fleecing the common man and defeating Donald Trump in November.

If it were, bravo. It’s not, though.

Once again, the radical American right must continue to supply its doe-eyed acolytes with new outrages. Anger is MAGA’s currency, and they’ll supply it anyway possible, jabbing their needles into susceptible Americans’ adrenal glands. If it means cooking up new varieties of freakishness, they’re happy to oblige.

I’ll have more on the origins of this species in the coming weeks, but for now it’s enough to say these men represent tens of millions of Americans. They’ll vote almost exclusively for Republicans this fall (if they vote at all.) They’re unhappy for no reason and every reason. They want a world they understand, that benefits them (because 2,000 years just isn’t enough) and in which they’re in control.

That’s really what all this is about, right guys?

News and Notes:

I hope you’ll check out the latest episode of the Lincoln Project podcast. This week I have a conversation with Mary Pat Hector, CEO of Rise, an organization dedicated to organizing and deploying young activists to ensure GenZ turns out this fall. I learned a lot and I think you will, too.